December has proved to be a difficult month for observing in my neck of the woods. While the weather held out for the lunar occultation of Venus on the 1st of December, the rest of the month has all but disappeared under a carpet of overcast cloud. Following right on the back of the occultation was the Geminid meteor shower which for everyone concerned was more or less a washout due to a full moon. Any hopes I had of getting out to try and observe even just a few of the brighter Geminid meteors were squashed by this ever predictable weather. The Ursid shower looked like my last hope for a meteoric display before the year was out, but with the elements set against me I wasn’t optimistic of my chances.
A tweet from fellow Twitterer TaviGreiner changed all that. A keen astrophotographer, Tavi was featured over at universetoday.com for her stunning picture of the triple conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter back at the beginning of the month which you can see here.
Tavi’s tweet was a reminder about the Ursids peak on the 22nd/23rd of December and included a link to the fantastic web site SpaceWeather.com. Here you could listen in on the Ursids via an audio stream coming from their FM receiving station as the meteoroids entered the atmosphere. Albeit that this was on the other side of the world I was highly delighted as it meant it no longer mattered if I was able to visually observe the Ursid shower or not. Between 23:24 - 02:00 UT I listened in and picked up seven fairly prominent pings (when a meteoroid enters the atmosphere) which is pretty good going I think considering it was my first time taking part in any kind of radio astronomy. The great thing about this kind of observing is that you don’t have to bear the freezing cold temperatures of the winter nights. The down side is that you don’t get the wow factor of visually catching the meteoroids blazing a trail across the sky, but it is great fun nonetheless.
Coming from a sound engineering background this kind of thing has really piqued my curiosity and I’m giving serious thought to setting up my own radio meteor observatory so that I can listen in as the various major meteor showers occur above my local area. If this sounds like you’re kind of thing or you’re just interested in finding out more I would recommend taking a look at this great web site: www.radiodesignservices.co.uk